I have a few more things up my sleeve for the future (cough…a seminar reading program) but I first decided to move things around in the library to facilitate easier browsing and more comfortable surroundings to encourage long-form reading.

Shelving fiction in genres is nothing new- many libraries have made the shift, but many are still considering it. I did see circulation statistics rise when I moved things at my old school and I do believe that that type of shelving fosters browsing. Many things can impact circulation statistics, of course, but the rise I saw, paired with anecdotal feedback from many many students about it being “easier to find books” has convinced me that moving to fiction genres for shelving is the way to go here at Northwest.

I got lucky.

The librarian that preceded me here had already placed genre stickers on the spines of every single fiction book:

Fantasy

Realistic

Sports

Mystery/horror

Humorous

Historical

Adventure

Romance

You can see the multicolored stickers here:

So it was a matter of moving all 12,000 books. I switched the fiction section so that it was closer to the door and main area of the library, which meant all of them had to move. Here’s the result:

It took 10 book trucks and three weeks. I only accidentally dumped a truck once:

Once the books were moved, it was a matter of putting up signage to help students find what they are in the mood for:

Final result with signage:

Now I’m working on getting each book’s section input into the sublocation field in Destiny, our library automation software.

The payoff?

Just yesterday, when students were in the library for enrollment, Ms. Koeningsdorf came over to tell me that her students were remarking that “it is going to be so much easier to find books now!”

Hello again, world. It has been a while since I have kept up with this blog in a consistent manner, but after attending the METC Conference a few weeks ago, I have been inspired to begin writing here again as a reflection of my own work, and to hopefully let my teachers know what is going on in the library and how I can help them.

First off, I am at Shawnee Mission Northwest now, so any posts that you see here before this one reflect my work at my previous school.

So let’s talk about reading. Student reading, to be specific.

There are a wealth of depressing statistics about the decline of teen reading over the past few decades. Time Magazine and CommonSense Media report that “45% of 17-year-olds saying they read by choice only once or twice a year” and that “the proportion who “never” or “hardly ever” read [has] tripled since 1984.”

Sebastien Wiertz via Flickr Creative Commons

The pressing problem that our teachers anecdotally report is that students struggle to stay with any lengthier piece of text: novels, articles any longer than one page or so.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, eloquently describes this phenomenon:

Students DO read A LOT via their connected lives. But it is a different kind of reading. Short. Linked. Jump from this to that.

Just as we are asking students to think more deeply, their lives are telling them that there is no time for that:

Wake up, don’t be tardy to school, shush-up-we-have-a-lot-to-cover-before-the-state-or-AP-assessments, GO-be on time to work/practice/watch your siblings, quick-gobble some dinner before a few hours of homework, go to bed-you aren’t getting enough sleep already, wake up and do it all again. Oh, wait- figure out where you can cram in community service, scholarship applications, clubs and activities, time with your family/friends, OHHHHH, what’s that? Neeettflixx. Time to daydream or be creative? Pffft. Gonna need to create a time-manipulation machine for that.

So how do we help students re-gain their reading endurance? We have to decide if it is a priority, and we have to give them TIME.

Our cross-country team is historically very successful. Roughly 33 state titles in 46 years. GO COUGARS! The coaching staff doesn’t take new runners and throw them out in the street to run 6 miles on their first day of practice. That would result in injuries, burnout, and copious profanity.

We need to scaffold our way back to reading endurance.We need to surround students with quality, high-interest reading material, and we need to give them TIME to select and read.

For instance: 8 minutes the first two weeks, then 15 minutes for a couple of weeks, then 20, then 30, then 45. Or faster/slower depending on the makeup of the class and progress. This does not mean reading out loud as a group; this means independent reading.

I’m dusting off the ol’ blog for this one. Mrs. McPherson and I took sixteen students to Cerner’s Innovation Campus, which is their technology center. The goal was to generate excitement for technology centered careers and to get a realistic look at what the work environment of a tech career looks like.

We started with Brittni Kingston presenting to the group about Cerner’s “dev culture.”

The presentation had a retro gaming theme, which was perfect for high school students, as many in our group are gamers. She highlighted some of the ways that Cerner creates an exciting culture for software development including:

Conferences and other continual learning experiences (Cerner’s DevCon looks like a lot of fun: Lego theme! One of our students asked whether it is open to the public. He was bummed to learn that it is not.)

Code retreats: on campus with catered food; centered on programming and problem solving

Next, students divided into two groups for a question/answer session with Andy, a software architect, and Brandon, who develops Cerner’s Java application. They discussed various aspects of a job in software development: typical day, tasks, education needed, and skills needed.

Brandon

Andy

Then we finished up with a tour of the campus, including the gym, work areas, cafe, meeting rooms, and showcase rooms. Students LOVED seeing the work areas with their developers cranking out code in jeans, on bean bags, in a stunning environment. WHITE BOARDS EVERYWHERE. Floor-to-ceiling whiteboards; white boards as scratch paper; even TABLES that are white boards. All filled with brainstorming, flow patterns, and code. Kind of makes me want to install whiteboards all over the library.

Stunning

Intense coding going on here, for sure

Gaming theme in the lounge area

Client demonstration areas

Liz, with whom I coordinated this visit, told students all about Cerner’s internship opportunities and a few students have already told me that they are planning on looking into applying in the future.

A number of the students were buzzing about the campus as we left, so I would call this visit a success in terms of our goals to generate excitement about tech careers!

Hello Piper teachers- I realize I’ve been completely slacking in my mission to highlight tools with classroom application for you this semester. I’ll do better next semester, I promise.

Mike Licht, NotionsCapitol.com Flickr Creative Commons

For today, I thought I’d call blogging to your attention. A few benefits to student blogging:

Authentic writing and reflection (Trying to get your students to write for an audience? Want them to reflect on an article, a current event, results of an experiment? )

Students can read and respond to classmates’ work and writing

Students can learn using a digital method of communication- skills they will need in many careers

Students can build a positive online portfolio and digital footprint

Most blogs are blocked by the filter, but James has set up hosted WordPress blogging, which means that student accounts are hosted on a district server and are therefore not blocked.

I used blogging with my Information and Society students this semester, and it worked well. We worked on questioning and inquiry, discussion reflection, and tool reviews. We also had to constantly revisit the need to give credit to image sources, but they started to get the hang of it.

I would be happy to set up blog accounts for your students and help to get the process off the ground- as always, let me know!

One drawback to shelving fiction by genre is that students can get stuck in their preferred genre and miss out on some really amazing books from other genres. Next semester, I have plans for “Book Tasting” events, in which students sit in tables of four, have four bite-sized samples of foods (made by Mrs. Carlton’s Foods students) lined up in front of them, and four books from varying genres. They sample the first book and food for seven minutes. Then, they switch to the next; repeat. The hope is that students will get hooked on and want to finish books that they may never have given a chance otherwise.

On Friday, I did a trial run with my Information & Society class, only with candy instead of foods. Each book station looked like this:

The tables looked like this:

And students absorbed in reading looked like this:

I asked for feedback since they were my guinea pigs and they reported that:

They liked the activity

Many found books that they loved and want to finish reading

Many found books that they hated and really don’t want to finish

Seven minutes was just about right to get a taste for the book without getting fidgety

After they read for seven minutes, I gave them two to three minutes to fill this form out for each book to help them remember what they read for later:

I can’t wait to do the full activity with real food on a broader scale!

My Information & Society class was lucky to have four visitors from Cerner yesterday. The company is slated to open two huge buildings near the Legends shopping center in our district in the next year or so, and will become a fairly major presence in our community. That, combined with their focus on information, made them a perfect fit for our class!

Free Cerner earbuds for good questions!

Elise, Mark, Melissa, and Drew were engaging, humorous, and informative, even handing out earbuds to students who asked good questions and t-shirts for everyone! The students responded really well to their talk, and took away relevant new knowledge.

A few things that stood out and tied with our course curriculum:

Mission statement: “Health care is too important to stay the same.” (Ties with our discussions about how fast the information and tech world moves- need to constantly innovate)

Growth to a multi-national corporation (reflective of the Global emphasis)

Phase 1 was getting data into the system; New phase is getting the data out and making use of it

Taking vast amounts of data points and processing them to make diagnoses, etc (Sepsis program)

I chose the Barnes and Noble NOOK Simple Touch Reader for a number of reasons:

1. Institutional accounts are not one-to-one for our small amount of devices, the way that the Kindle is. Meaning, the 20 e-books that I purchased are accessible on all four devices, because they are all registered to our single account. My B & N rep did warn me, however, that that may change in the future.

2. The Simple Touch does not have a browser and students are not able to purchase content since they cannot get on our school protected wireless network without a password, which is guarded like the crown jewels around here.

3. B & N e-books are in ePub format, which is less proprietary and incompatible the way that Kindle’s .azw format is. I’m hoping that is a signal that B & N has an inkling to work with schools and libraries, since the devices that students learn on in school will likely form habits for future purchasing decisions…

We purchased 20 titles from varying genres and currently have them available for use in the library. As we get our feet wet with this and get the word out to students, we will probably expand the program into a checkout option. We will likely do so with parent permission and agreement of responsibility.

So far, students have expressed quite a bit of interest and I hear a lot of “These are cool!” statements as they play with them.